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1
Introduction
In this introductory chapter, we start with a brief historical perspective of statistics and probability,
not to exactly account for its development, but to give the reader a sense of why statistics, while
rmly grounded in mathematics, has an empirical and applied avor.
1.1 BRIEF HISTORY OF STATISTICAL AND PROBABILISTIC ANALYSIS
In the western world, statistics started in the seventeenth century a little over 300 years ago
attributed by many to John Graunt who attempted to relate data of mortality to public health
by constructing life tables (Glass, 1964). Thus, the birth of statistics relates to solving problems
in demography ...